Adventures in Bali: Part III

A fish house in the distance

We spent some time in the water while we were in Amed. The picture above pretty accurately depicts the weather every day we were there: sunny, clear, and hot! We went snorkeling and fishing with the a guy named Dena. It was the first time I'd been snorkeling, and it was the perfect day for it. We got a nice tip from Dena about how to keep your mask from fogging up: pepsodent toothpaste. Sure enough it, it worked really well. We saw hundreds of fish, and the most colorful I'd ever seen. A couple clown fish tried to nibble on John's hand, but they decided that he wasn't too tasty. A jellyfish was eating Nemo right where we got in- jellyfish are fascinating to watch! Glad it was preoccupied though. We snorkeled in two different spots, and were out about two hours.. Definitely the highlight of the week for me, and we will have to get an underwater camera for our next trip.

Fishing with a handmade line!

 One of our last evenings in Bali, we went out fishing and for a late afternoon boat ride along the coast. Dena fashioned an extremely long and intricate fishing line, that came to look like a quarter of a spider's web for lack of a picture. He started pulling out his line at one point, and literally took out 15 fish in one go. John and I had no luck with this method, however, so I suppose we will stick with reel and rod.  He gave us four fish to take back for dinner, and they were delicious.

John taking a turn

The coastline was quite busy at sunset as all the boats were coming in. Once it gets dark, there is no way to find the shore til morning, so we headed back in during the pink and purple twilight.

Holy Mackerel! 

There are little altars to the gods all over Bali. Depending on where the altar is, you can find lots of different offerings. For example, in the Denpasar airport, there are altars outside all the different restaurants and shops so Starbucks had a cup of coffee in their altar while the gift shop had some candied mago. Around Amed, the altars are very well stocked with flowers, fruit, and usually incense is always burning. A man came around daily to maintain the altars at the hotel. They often have umbrellas to keep the gods and offerings from getting wet.

Shrine with umbrella

Shrine outside our room

The morning before we left, we had one final "Islander's breakfast", which is a really thick crepe with pineapple or banana chunks fried into it with some golden syrup on top, a plate of papaya, watermelon, and banana, and tea.  It was a great week in the East of Bali, and we would certainly recommend it.

Last breakfast